If You were bill gates...

[sean_foulkes]

If you were bill gates, what would you do with microsoft? would you make it open-source, or just retire the company and play with your billions for the rest of your life?

[vbp6us]

I like the sound of the latter part. The playing w/ my billions. Who wouldnt?

[El_Cu_Guy]

If I were Bill Gates this post wouldn't even exist. The question simply asks what I would do if I were Bill Gates. It does not pose the assumption that someone suddenly becomes Gates tomorrow.

If I were Bill Gates I would have made numerous decision that would conflict with his own. If you wanna know what at least one of them is then I suggest that you read up on your Xenix history.

[Icarus]

...I wouldn't be here

Oh wait, that was already said ;)

...read up on your Xenix history.
Don't you mean Xerox?

xenix
<operating system> A commercial version of Unix for
microprocessor-based computers, released by Microsoft in
1980. In 1992, SCO became Microsoft's co-development partner
and the alternate source for the product.Nope, your right :D

[El_Cu_Guy]

In 1992, SCO became Microsoft's co-development partner

WHAT!?! A loophole in a contract (which SCO was later relased from by a judge's order) requiring SCO to include Xenix code in UnixWare for backwards compatibility after MS sold it's rights to Xenix and the Unix market to SCO, is called a partnership?

Bill's mistake:

Appearantly Bill Gates hadn't seen X11 (X11/R3 was barely out), and wanted to use the Xenix money to fund Windows 3.x. He thought he could buy the company (SCO) for pocket change. What Gates didn't count on was some other investors (HP, DEC, SUN, IBM, AT&T...) that weren't willing to sell. Gates was stuck with 25% of a corporation that prevented him from ever going back into the UNIX market.